Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Beginner ChucK instruments & a cool book

Well, I've finished an assignment for one of my music classes where I was asked to make three instruments (at least one using fm synthesis), document them, and use them in a composition. The class was a CSound based class, but I hate the rigidity of that language, so I convinced the prof (the one and only Barry Truax) to let me write in ChucK.

I've put them all under GPL and I'll publish the documentation under the GNU Free Document License. The reason why I'm blogging about this? Well, there's two motivations 1) I've yet to publish this stuff anywhere, so what's the point in a GPL license if I don't publish it 2) I think with the accompanying documentation, it's actually a nice intro for someone to learn about ChucK. Don't get me wrong, the ChucK documentation is quite nice, and I'm not about to claim you shouldn't read it if you want to learn ChucK, but seeing a slightly more extensive sythesis design algorithm might be a bit more of an idea starter for the beginner ChucKist.

Oh, and I though I should also mention this wonderful new book that I have no affiliation with, but have been reading quite heavily recently. FLOSS+ART it's a series of essays detailing the changes that FLOSS has brought to Art. Don't miss the torrent link at the bottom of the page!